


Chokecherry

by unsmilingchuck



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale's WWII First Aid Kit, Birching/Switching, Bit of Pining Toward the End and/Hence the Option to Read it as Slashy, But Offscreen and Deeply Unsexy, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Filling Out Grad School Applications, Implied/Referenced Violence, M/M, Mentions of Sandalphon and Gabriel, Mild Angst, Tending to injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 20:17:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20730155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsmilingchuck/pseuds/unsmilingchuck
Summary: “You’re bleeding.” Crowley instantly wants to kick himself. Obviously.Aziraphale’s hands are a mess. Deep red cuts crisscross his palms, thin but numerous beyond counting. Some are scattered along his fingers, more seem to disappear under the cuffs of his shirtsleeves. He’s not bleeding heavily, but blood still wells to the surface from some of the deeper wounds. The skin that isn’t cut is mottled with bruises and dried blood. It might be the worst injury Crowley’s ever seen on him.It might be the only injury, in fact.---Aziraphale is injured. Crowley takes care of him.





	Chokecherry

**Author's Note:**

> Do you spend your nights trawling through Hurt/Comfort tags looking for prolonged depictions of tender wound care? Same! You've come to the right place. Just don’t take any of this as actual medical advice--you should never treat anyone with 70-year-old medical equipment, no matter how intensely you’re pining after them.

The bookshop smells of blood when Crowley walks in. It’s not a strong scent, nor a particularly fresh one, but it is certainly odd. The bookshops is supposed to smell like old books and sun-warmed wood. And it does, mostly, but underneath that usual bookshop smell is—his tongue flickers between his lips—drying blood, cut with…guilt.

It’s enough to arrest Crowley in the doorway, worry flaring in his chest, until Aziraphale’s voice calls from somewhere in the distance.

“I don’t know what that sign is telling you but I’m afraid we’re rather closed at the moment.” His voice is clipped, agitated even. Crowley zeros in on the sound of shuffling papers and makes his way towards Aziraphale’s office. The scent of blood grows stronger.

“Just me, angel. What the heaven you gotten yourself—“ The “into” dies in his throat as he rounds an overstuffed bookcase and comes face-to-face with a pile of bloody cotton gloves and a horrorstruck Aziraphale.

The connection should be obvious, but Crowley still finds himself struggling with the math. He looks at the gloves: thin white cotton, archival, stained various reds and browns. He looks at Aziraphale: wide-eyed, avoiding his gaze, not visibly bleeding, but—he flicks his tongue again—certainly the source of the blood. He looks back at the gloves: a neat pile on the edge of the desk, palms streaked with bloodstains. He looks at Aziraphale. He looks at Aziraphale’s hands.

“You’re bleeding.” Crowley instantly wants to kick himself. Obviously.

Aziraphale’s hands are a mess. Deep red cuts crisscross his palms, thin but numerous beyond counting. Some are scattered along his fingers, more seem to disappear under the cuffs of his shirtsleeves. He’s not bleeding heavily, but blood still wells to the surface from some of the deeper wounds. The skin that isn’t cut is mottled with bruises and dried blood. It might be the worst injury Crowley’s ever seen on him.

It might be the only injury, in fact.

“I, ah, I suppose I am.” Aziraphale sort of looks like he wants to stuff his hands into a convenient desk draw and put them out of sight. “There was a bit of an..accident.”

Crowley, against his better judgement, sometimes remembers Heaven. Remembers that most of the time after Lucifer got sacked, things were fine, except every so often someone would get pulled into a back room and come out looking a little worse for wear. Not often that you wanted to leave, but often enough that you kept your doubts to yourself.

“Don’t see how you could ‘accidentally’ birch your hands into a bleeding mess. Is Gabriel aware that there are easier ways to take someone’s limbs off?”

“Gabriel had nothing to do with this! I told, you it was an accident.“

“Then why haven’t you healed yourself? You don’t need to be a martyr.” A wave of embarrassment rolls off Aziraphale.

“I’m afraid I can’t.” He turns to shuffle a pile of books from one table to another, wincing at the movement. Without thinking Crowley grabs his wrist mid-shuffle, manifesting a miracle before Aziraphale can protest.

It’s like sloshing wine in a half-empty bottle. The energy rolls away, breaks over itself, and returns. Crowley tries again, and again, until he realizes his paperwork Downstairs might start looking rather wonky. Aziraphale reclaims his wrist with a pointed look.

“I told you, it can’t be healed.”

“That’s impossible.” As if he hasn’t just tried and failed himself. But how? It would take something exceptionally divine or demonic…

“It may have, ah-“ Azirphale clears his throat, “I don’t know for sure, of course, this is mere speculation on my part, but I imagine that if this was caused by something cut from the tree—that is to say, the Tree—it may have more of a…lasting impact.”

Crowley feels the sudden urge to yell, or perhaps hit something very, very hard. Instead his turns on his heel and stalks towards the little kitchenette in the back of the shop. He begins yanking cabinets open at random as Aziraphale silently watches him from behind his book pile. The indignant shame sharpens to wariness.

Behind a collection of rusting tea canisters is a midsized cardboard box, half covered in dust and half slowly becoming dust itself. Crowley pulls it out from its hiding place. The peeling paper label reads “THE HOUSEHOLDER’S FIRST AID CASE (AS RECOMMENDED BY THE HOME OFFICE) FOR A. R. P.”

Perfect.

“Sit,” directs Crowley, gesturing towards the nearest armchair. Or at least he would gesture, if he wasn’t concentrating quite so hard on keeping the decaying first aid kit in one piece. Aziraphale mulishly remains standing until Crowley wanders past him and hooks a foot under the ottoman, pulling it next to to side table where he deposits the kit. It’s only after he takes a seat himself that Aziraphale joins him, perched on edge of the armchair and avoiding eye contact.

The cardboard box may be rapidly turning to dust, but everything inside of it appears intact—perhaps more intact than it should be. The scent of smelling salts mingles with the ancient cardboard, cut by the uncertainty rolling off Aziraphale in waves. Pushing aside the tourniquet and safety pins, Crowley pulls out cotton balls, iodine, and (after a moment’s consideration) all of the bandages.

“Do you really think that’s going to do anything?” asks Aziraphale, eyeing the blue-black gleam of the iodine bottle. His hands sit stiffly on his knees, half clenched, as if letting them fall open would be more painful. Crowley shrugs and unscrews the iodine bottle one-handed, shaking a few drops onto a cotton ball.

“Might. Might not.” He reaches for Aziraphale’s right hand. “Suppose we’ll find out.”

Aziraphale lets himself be handled, wincing slightly as Crowley uncurls his clenched fingers. He fiddles with the button of Aziraphale’s sleeve with his other hand, neatly folding back the cuff to reveal a few more lines scattered across his wrist. Involuntarily he remembers again: the high, breathy whistle of the switch cutting through the air, echoing off the vaulted ceilings. The way they all avoided eye contact with each other, refusing to acknowledge the pained whimpers growing fainter with each sharp crack. The guilty relief that luckily it wasn’t you, it was someone else, at least this time.

“Now,” says Crowley, moving the iodine bottle away from the edge of the table, “I’m pretty sure this is going to sting.”

Cotten ball in hand, he dabs at Aziraphale’s cuts as gently as possible, watching his face in his peripheral vision. Aziraphale hisses sharply, jerking his hand away before murmuring an apology and moving closer again. Crowley readjusts his grip and tries to ignore the faint queasiness in his stomach. It doesn’t feel like healing, scrubbing iodine into Aziraphale’s wounds. He knows that should come as a demonic sort of comfort to him, but it doesn’t. He lingers over a stubborn patch of dried blood and Aziraphale squirms at the edge of his seat, shoulders tense. He face is twisted less in discomfort and more in surprise, as if he’s experiencing a new kind of pain. The iodine burns Crowley’s tongue as he wets another cotton ball.

“Doing okay? We can stop if you like.”

Aziraphale hesitates before shaking his head.

“No I—keep going. I’m alright.” He lightly wiggles the fingers of his captive hand and almost immediately grimaces. “Just takes some getting used to. I don’t think angels typically feel this sort of thing.”

“I suppose not,” says Crowley, returning to him ministrations. In the gentler moments it feels like a painting restoration, dissolving layers of grime and decay to reveal the image underneath. Except in this case, the image is a patchwork of welts and bruises. The cotton turns brown and red with dried blood. Crowley exchanges Aziraphale’s right hand for his left one and begins the process anew, starting with the cuts along his wrist and working towards his fingertips. Slowly Aziraphale is starting to relax, shoulders inching down with each dab of the iodine-soaked cotton ball.

As with the rest of his body Aziraphale has always taken good care of his hands. Crowley has seen his hoard in the apartment upstairs: the various lotions and ointments, gleaming files in soft leather cases, unfailingly fussy soap choices. He has his favorite parlors and salons, the occasional lacquered manicure in white or pink. Even marred like this, the care is still evident: his skin is soft under Crowley’s touch, his unpainted nails trimmed down to neat crescent moons.

Aziraphale is the one who breaks the silence. “I know you don’t believe me but it really was an accident. Sandalphon jut got a bit carried away. Everyone’s gotten themselves all worked up thinking Armageddon is just around the corner and tempers are starting to fray a bit. I’m sure it’s the same for your people. And Gabriel really did have nothing to do with this—he was very helpful, actually. Stepped in and sorted everything out and sent me on my way.” He smiles at Crowley, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “So, it’s all fine now, really.”

“If you say so.” Crowley tosses his last cotton ball into the pile on the table before combusting the whole thing with a wave of his hand.

Aziraphale’s hands look better once they’re clean. The bruises are more obvious, no longer obscured by patches of dried blood, but the scabbing cuts look less alarming.

Crowley sets to work on the bandages. It’s sort of a puzzle—how to cover all the cuts and welts without inadvertent mummification. He tears open the paper packages, unspooling rolls of white cloth in various sizes. Aziraphale’s uncertainly has almost entirely dissipated, and the sharp scent of the iodine has more or less disappeared. He begins again at Aziraphale’s wrist, threading ribbons of gauze around his palm and between his fingers, tying off neat little bows as he works his way down.

“You’ve done this before,” says Aziraphale, watching Crowley turn his hand this way and that with new interest.

“More or less, yeah. Warlock’s learning how to ride a bike.” Crowley winds a thin bandage around the mutilated end of Aziraphale’s thumb. “Lots of scraped knees and bloody noses. He’s lucky there are so many boxwoods. If you have to crash into a bush: boxwoods, any day of the week. Boxwoods will treat you alright.”

“I’ll be sure to...keep that in mind.”

They lapse back into silence, Crowley wrapping the last few cuts on Aziraphale’s left hand. The golden signet ring gleams in the lamplight, peeking between layers of cotton, thin as a wedding band. The scent of blood is no longer overwhelming, merely diffused through crumbling paper and aging upholstery. Somewhere in the kitchenette the kettle clicks to life, humming with the sound of simmering water.

Crowley realizes, quite suddenly, that he’s finished—both of Aziraphale’s hands are clean and neatly bandaged, and there’s nothing else to do beyond waiting for them to heal on their own. He feels a gnawing hesitation. His work is done, but he doesn’t want to let go. He finds himself lost in another, more recent time—two hundred years ago? three hundred?—when Aziraphale had been wrapped in layers of cream and lace, with full skirts and red lips, and it had been only proper for Crowley to kiss the back of his hand in greeting, for that was how you greeted a gentle lady in those days. It would be so easy now, to press the faintest of kisses to the back of his hand, lips ghosting over soft skin. A single kiss to say “It will all be alright. Don’t you worry.”

Instead, Crowley returns Aziraphale’s hand and finds himself instantly missing the warm weight of it cradled in his palm.

“Thank you, dear boy,” Aziraphale smiles, cautiously. Crowley watches as his handiwork is put to the test, Aziraphale clenching his hands into fists before splaying his fingers out wide. Rolling his wrists and nodding with satisfaction as the bandages all remain in place. “How long will it be before this heals?”

“Hm? Oh, a few weeks probably. Longer if you do something stupid like reopen them. You’ll want to change the bandages before then though; they get real nasty after a day or two.” Crowley begins to pack everything back into the first aid box, thinking very stern thoughts about how it ought to stay in one piece for just a bit longer, please and thank you.

“Would you be able to…again?” Aziraphale’s words are quiet and halting. He looks as though he’d very much like to be anxiously wringing his hands. “I know, of course, you’re very busy—both of us having day jobs, isn’t that strange—and I could do it myself, but it’s so tricky with the both of them like this—“

“Of course,” Crowley cuts in, “of course. You know me, always happy to help.”

He remembers Heaven, when his luck had run out. Remembers the dull ache of healing his own wounds, alone, with no one even willing to look at him. Or if they did look, looking down their noses. Jokes on them. They’re all demons now.

“Wonderful,” Aziraphale beams, the happiest he’s looked all evening. Crowley flicks out his tongue once more and finds that the cloying anxiety has dissipated at last, leaving the regular bookshop smell of old furniture and older manuscripts. Tomorrow he’ll have to do it all over again. The bookshop will smell once more of blood and iodine as he redresses Aziraphale’s wounds, and he won’t be able to keep the memories of Heaven out of his mind. Tomorrow, but not today.

In the kitchenette, the kettle whistles, ready for tea.

**Author's Note:**

> Baby's first fic (maybe even first piece of fiction written since high school creative writing class? wild), so please be gentle in comments. I read Good Omens five years ago, watched the show, watch the show again, started picking at this, reread Good Omens for a refresh, and then finished writing, so that's why canon/characterization might be a bit of a hodgepodge. They say write what you would want to read and that's pretty much what this is. 
> 
> Also Aziraphale's first aid kit is real! You can find it here if you'd like a visual: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30025748.
> 
> Editing this note in November to add: I'm embarking on a weird project, which is an email newsletter specific to this AO3 account. Think of it like a more robust version of subscribing--you'll get notified when I publish something new, as well as recommendations, miscellaneous reflections, and behind the scenes glimpses of me figuring out what it means to write something. It will be short, and I won't send anything out more frequently than once per week (it'll probably be closer to once per month). You can subscribe at [buttondown.email/unsmilingchuck](https://buttondown.email/unsmilingchuck)


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